Watch Me Entertain Myself!

Sacha Guitry once said, "You can pretend to be serious, but you can't pretend to be witty." Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.

(pilot episode: 20 January 2004)

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Oh Well

What happens when you find out that a shining example of a person turned out to have clay feet? Does it negate all those years of her exemplary behavior?

To many, she was an exceptional person. Loving wife, thoughtful mother, and a generous friend who connected to a lot of people from all walks of life. Despite Life and Fate dealing her several heavy blows from left and right, she bore them up well. People practically canonized her. “Oh, look how strong she is!” “Such dignity, such bravery, such selflessness.”

Then she killed herself. No suicide note. No warning.

And now when you look back at her Facebook wall, what seemed like introspective musings of hers now look like unheeded cries for help. Are we just overreacting? Are we reading too much into her status messages? Do we just want things to make some sense?

None of it makes sense. Then again, the trials she went through didn’t make sense either. So in a way a certain balance was maintained. Her death was but the final inexplicable, nonsensical punctuation she placed at the end of her sentence.